Little Lenny  
    Jerry Vilhotti


Little Leny one n, hovered beneath his mother, looming in the night, seeking part of her sweater to warm his flesh and bones but she could not extend the warmth of the wool fabric to him and so Leny falsified the reality; shivering at the sight of his tall father and in his occurring fitful dream his father became a young boy he was teaching to swim. Leny said: "OK now, I'm going to let go! Try it on your own!" The father sank and Leny brought up mud with one hand while placing his fist into his mother's lap.

"What are you doing ?" Her voice came through the wall.

"Nothing Mama! Nothing!" He imagined breaking his penis off with a vehement snap of the wrist.

When she came and closed the door, wearing her long see through white night gown, and went back to her bedroom where his father lay like a tall mound, he felt as if she had plucked out his eyes. She had so much wanted her favorite son and his father to share what the man had in a groin but the transmitting never came to fruition. All that happened was the fruit became smothered by a hundred foul smelling insects; devouring first the fruit and then each other.




Die Johnny Die  

    Jerry Vilhotti


Instead of standing in the dark when the sirens screamed obscenities, Johnny would have climbed into his junk car gray colored plane, that color because the Great Depression prevented his father from buying it from the Fordham Road toy store, to follow the thick streak of white light that was searching the night sky for enemy planes to label them as they came in from a place called California where concentration camps were springing up to make it safe for many other Americans. And even if he were shot down - after shooting down five suns and becoming an ace - he would have felt much better than going down in his building that his older brothers and sisters said would collapse even on a near miss of an exploding bomb, so old their apartment building was built when the poet Poe walked with his demons in old Fordham Village, and being trapped under a million chipped red bricks. He did not want to die that way, if he ever had to die.



Jerry Vilhotti has been published in The Literary Review, Antgonish Review and Dream International and many other literary magazines.
 
 
 
 

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